One Textbook Changes Everything

Dlulisa Initiative is a youth-led organization that operates in South Africa. Dlulisa forms partnerships with well-resourced schools, communities, and corporate companies in order to ensure disadvantaged primary school children from vulnerable backgrounds are given educational resources, high self-esteem support, and access to continued education.

Our Mission

To form effective partnerships and distribute resources that are fundamental for intervening in the schooling lives of vulnerable students as well as to monitor and track growth of children in order to provide greater access to education.

What We Do

Providing Access to Educational Resources

Using corporate donations, we work with the school to select locally appropriate textbook and readers that are proven to increase numeracy and literacy skills.

Monitoring the use of the resources

We ensure these educational resources go all the way by working with the school to track the growth and progress that each child makes. If no improvement, we see it that our network of private schools can intervene.

Access to Educational Sponsorships

This allows us to expose high-potential identified learners to continued support through high school scholarships and mentorships (we have partnered with a network of over 100 private schools).

Our Goals

01.– SHORT TERM

To ensure every single vulnerable child in South Africa has access to a meaningful support system that provides both tangible support (textbooks and reading programs) as well as emotional support (resilience mentorships).

02.– LONG TERM

Inform the greater discussion on how government, businesses, and civil society can effectively work to reducing the achievement gap in education. To reduce the drop-out rate in South Africa.

South Africa’s Education Problems

1.

It is unequal. Black students disproportionately are more likely to attend an underfunded, under-resourced school that underperforms in retention and school completion rates as compared to white students.

2.

Even though the country spends much more than any other African country on education, children (especially vulnerable children) do not see school as a means to prosperity since Apartheid narratives painted education as not belonging to the black child.

3.

South Africa has a high number of children (about 60%) coming from vulnerable backgrounds (child-headed households, orphaned children, girls in impoverished areas).